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UER Forum > Archived US: South > Three Sands (Viewed 1573 times) dwtaylor999  Location: Unassigned Lands, Oklahoma Gender: Male  |  Three Sands < on 2/26/2012 1:52 AM >   In the late fall of 1920, "Spot" Geyer was talking with his boss, E.W. Marland in Ponca City, Oklahoma. "Spot", who headed Marland's geology department, was working to convince Marland that there was oil southwest of Ponca City near the town of Tonkawa. It wasn't a hard sell, as Marland had already won and lost a fortune in oil and coal, and was working on his building his second. A cooperative venture was formed between the Humpreys, Cosden, Prairie and Kay County oil and gas companies to drill ten test wells in the area. The first nine holes were dry. But while drilling the final hole on a warm summer day on the 29th of June, 1921, they struck pay dirt. At a depth of 2,660 feet in what would be known as the Tonkawa sand, the well began producing a 1000 barrels per day. Though they tried to keep it quiet, word quickly spread, and people rushed to the area. Most of the drilling was around the Sam McKee farm in Noble county, but quickly spread north along the highway towards Tonkawa in neighboring Kay county. The price of leases rapidly became so high that only larger oil companies could afford to work in the area. Clusters of houses and stores began to show up at crossroads along the highway. As workers arrived, businessmen followed, setting up grocery stores, dry goods, repair shops, restaurants, entertainment, and hotels, with oil field supply houses with machine shops, boilers, etc following shortly after. There was little or no organization, with "towns" springing up wherever there was a need, many of them later vying to become functional towns. These included.Hatchville, Murray, Four Ways, Kanolka, Foster City, Riverview, Blue Ridge, and Comar. The Tonkawa paper complained bitterly about the hodge podge organization. Comar, at the site of the original strike, was a shortened version of "The Companies of Marland". Merchants and officials from the Comar Company met and agreed on the name "Three Sands" because oil was being produced from three different oil sands depths, the Carmichael, the Wilcox, and the Tonkawa. Within six months they were producing from seven, and at the end, nine. The other "towns" never really disappeared as the main business area stretched over 3 miles and the oil field encompassed 8. By Christmas of 1922, eleven boarding houses and a multitude of cafés served the workers. The Cozy theater had been built along with a two story dance hall, and an increasing number of businesses.. By spring of 1923, the citizens we clamoring for a post office, as there were now 2,000 people in Three Sands and 3,000 more in the area. In response, the postal service moved the post office located at Four Corners to Three Sands on June 15th, 1923. The population eventually grew to an estimated 8,000 with another 10,000 in the surrounding area. Typical with boom towns, housing was at a premium. Lumber was in such demand that the carpenters had to guard it around the clock. Those unlucky enough not to find a more stable structure lived in tents, shacks, or dugouts while workmen worked day and night to put up frame buildings for businesses and housing. ”Two-Ton Tilly” and “Three Sands Blanche” operated boarding houses that were always full. Though prohibition was in effect, alcohol was plentiful with deliveries made by the “hunchback” who worked for a local bootlegger. An excerpt from the memoir of an Ed Aryain, a Syrian emigrant and business man who showed up in the early days of Three Sands. Ed later moved to Seminole, Texas, where he ended up settling down and opened a dry goods store. Ed passed away in 1974. "I road over to Three Sands and was astonished to see blocks of new frame buildings going up. cafés, drug stores, grocery stores, rooming houses, hotels, sporting houses, and bootleggers by the score were open for business, but not a room was to be had for love nor money, so I had to ride back to Tonkawa to find one in a boarding house. Each day I road back and forth between Tonkawa and Three sands, a distance of thirty miles round trip. I did very good business, but I spent over four hours each way travelling and had little time for work. Each day when I returned to Tonkawa I was covered with dirt, for traffic was heavy on the sandy and dusty unpaved road, and my poor horse was given out from the long trip. I finally found a room in a hotel in Three Sands and thought my problem was solved, but it wasn't. The room was clean enough, but it was not a suitable place for a decent man to live as there were six prostitutes making dates with men at all hours of the day and night, and there was much drinking, fighting, and commotion. It was a dangerous place to be, for one might be robbed or killed. All night long men tromped up and down the halls, slamming doors and talking loudly, with drunken women singing at the top of their voices. I left the room and felt lucky I had gotten out alive." The oil companies built row houses, typically shotgun style, for their workers and families. They were painted to match the company colors. Green for Comar, gray for Gypsy, gray with red roofs for Amerada, and gold for Carter. Schools were built and some semblance of civilization settled over the area. Surrounding towns benefitted from the boom as well. No rail was ever extended into Three Sands, so most of the equipment and supplies flowed through Tonkawa, briefly called "The Billion Dollar Spot". The nearby town of Bliss had its population jump 500 percent and in April of 1922, the citizens voted to rename their town Marland, to honor oilman Ernest W. Marland in hopes he would locate some of his oil operations at Bliss. The only Marland Oil Company presence that ever developed there was a loading rack where a pipeline terminated at the railroad. In 1923, disappointed citizens petitioned, unsuccessfully, for a return to "Bliss," because mail bound for Marland was being misrouted to Mooreland. There's a moral there somewhere. Marland in 1925 Despite its small size, the field produced a significant amount of oil, due to the large number of producing depths. Production from 1923 through 1925 ranged from twenty-three million to twenty-eight million barrels annually. Like all good things, it couldn't last, and by end of 1926, oil productivity began to fluctuate. By 1930 only a few hundred of the thousands of inhabitants remained. The Comar high school closed in the mid 1930s and the Three Sands school closed in 1946. By 1947 the field was producing less than 400,000 barrels per year. Some shots of the Three Sands school during a scrap metal drive during WWII. If you're wondering, they gathered 12 1/2 tons. Three Sands started out with a grocery store and café located in a shack on the C.C. Endicott farm. It was the first business to open and the last to close. Its final owners were George and Birdie Taylor, who closed it in 1951, The final chapter came with the closing of the post office in 1957. Nothing remains today of the sprawling area that was Three Sands, but the old Riverview cemetery, the abandoned debris of the oil field, and echoes of what once was. One of the old housing areas with community storm cellars. One of the few early oil field building still standing. I'll close with a quote from the Daily Oklahoman newspaper from April of 1923. "Three Sands is a crowd not a city. A struggling, shoving, pushing, determined, reckless, maddened, coldly calculating mixture of human beings who have forgotten for the time being that they are alive - who don’t seem to care how long they live - who, in fact, are bent on one thing - the getting of all the money they can as fast as they can. The person visiting Three Sands today finds himself in a traffic jam surpassing that of any city of 300,000 inhabitants. There isn’t such a thing as the ‘right-of-way’, The man who tries to make his way through the street is ‘in-the-way’ of everyone, including himself. All he can do is keep going. He can’t turn around, he can’t stop, he can’t become impatient - he can only keep going and at the same speed decided upon by a mile of automobiles, motor trucks, and pedestrians. If he took a notion to get away from the throng and speed through the fields to his destination, he would find himself trying to dodge oil well rigs that are so thick it’s pretty hard, sometimes, to walk between them without getting oil on your clothing." [last edit 2/27/2012 1:10 AM by dwtaylor999 - edited 4 times] Ruins, the fate of all cities. cdevon  Location: west county Gender: Male  |  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 1 on 2/26/2012 2:29 AM >   Very well done. Thank you for the history lesson. When I say I'm 'clean and sober', it means I've showered and I'm headed to the liquor store. marsrover  Gender: Male Exploring is for hipsters!  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 2 on 2/26/2012 2:54 AM >   So much history, and then the pictures of what it is today. This is why we explore. So i'm just pokeing around, are you gona do anything about it. sUrD  Location: anywhere the internet takes me Gender: Male Hello wasteland!  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 3 on 2/26/2012 5:16 PM >   Your threads are always so interesting. And I agree, this is definitely why i explore. Thanks so much for always sharing with the rest of our community. [last edit 2/26/2012 5:17 PM by sUrD - edited 1 times] ...the wings on my shoes shrank now the moths won't eat my kidneys, when i shake my state capital it only yields 3 fairy napkins, but how do i know my banana slippers are like water boats because when the moon winks it burns my hamster punches, and that's how you get to llama school rowing your canoe backwards up main street when the front bumper falls off, do mermaids get to drink orange juice? Imbroglio  Location: DFW Gender: Male The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.  |  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 4 on 2/26/2012 9:32 PM >   You are, pretty easily, the best contributor that I've yet seen on UER. As always, a fascinating read and wonderful documentation, both then and now. Thank you! http://www.noelkernsphotography.com Delta Fire  Location: Manteca, Ca Gender: Male  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 5 on 2/27/2012 3:29 AM >   As always, amazing post. You truly have a way of giving these places life again. More please... The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions. dwtaylor999  Location: Unassigned Lands, Oklahoma Gender: Male  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 6 on 2/27/2012 3:40 AM >   Thanks! Hell, without the story, it's just rubble and old buildings. Ruins, the fate of all cities. cdevon  Location: west county Gender: Male  |  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 7 on 2/27/2012 3:50 AM >   Posted by dwtaylor999 Thanks! Hell, without the story, it's just rubble and old buildings. i agree, with out the history, its just a bunch of old buildings. but also, that pickup truck- fair to say that i have never seen one that old, in that condition with lights and windows intact. When I say I'm 'clean and sober', it means I've showered and I'm headed to the liquor store. RevSM  Location: South Central Texas  |  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 8 on 2/27/2012 6:11 PM >   As always, very cool. It's hard to believe that there's so little left from that time. Tetanus for Breakfast! http://www.shatteredshutter.com dwtaylor999  Location: Unassigned Lands, Oklahoma Gender: Male  |  Re: Three Sands <Reply # 9 on 2/27/2012 8:59 PM >   I agree on what remained. It made finding the site tougher than I thought, but Whizbang and Carter Nine were equally difficult. I finally had to locate an old cemetery from the late 1890's and track it's location from there. It never fails to amaze me how little can survive, though I guess it makes sense, as most of the building were hastily constructed and really weren't built to last. The Cozy theater was just board and batten construction with a tar paper roof. In the case of Three Sands, much of the surrounding land was reclaimed as farm land after the boom, so even many of the old pipelines and concrete derrick pedestals have been removed. I found evidence of them dumped in washout areas in several places. The area was very flat and was (and is) prone to flooding. I found several references to the mud and how chains had to be used on the vehicles. I chuckled when I found the old truck with chains still on and mud still stuck from decades ago. From some of the back roads I travelled, it doesn't look like the mud situation has improved much. [last edit 2/27/2012 9:03 PM by dwtaylor999 - edited 2 times] Ruins, the fate of all cities. 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